Our Town’ performance hails 75 years

By Donna Boynton TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Sunday

Apr 28, 2013 at 12:22 AM

If you ask Alice Cavanaugh about life in her town 75 years ago, the 92-year-old Southboro resident will tell you there were no computers, no phones, no television. She’ll tell you about buses, some of which were horse-drawn buggies, and that she didn’t have a refrigerator but an icebox, kept cool by the deliveries of the local iceman.

She’ll also tell you about a storm — wind and rain that she knew was unlike any other. There was no way of predicting the storm’s strength, or that it would close school for two weeks. There was no way of knowing that it would be a historic storm known as the Hurricane of 1938.

That same year, the Pulitzer-winning play “Our Town” was taking Broadway by storm. “Our Town,” written by Thornton Wilder, looks at life in a small New England town, Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. It is a three-act play that looks at daily life, love and marriage, and death and eternity in Grover’s Corners between the years of 1901 and 1913. The play was originally — and still is — performed without any props, with the actors pantomiming their actions as they spoke the dialogue.

To celebrate the play’s 75th anniversary, Algonquin Regional High School will be performing “Our Town” this week. But the play is not just a celebration of a landmark American theater production, but a celebration of life in Northboro and Southboro in the year the play was written, 1938, and will be performed in an intimate — albeit challenging — “theater-in-the-round” setting.

The idea to connect the play with what was happening in the School District’s communities 75 years ago was from teacher Thomas Alera, an English teacher at Algonquin Regional High School.

“It is a play that I’ve always wanted to do,” Mr. Alera said, adding that the play speaks as much to the 1901-1913 time period as it does to what is happening in the world today. “It’s a powerful piece on our existence, that our time here on Earth is brief and fleeting. How do I help my students understand that?”

Mr. Alera said after years of wanting to do the play, now was the right time.

“As I get older, and you lose a lot of people, you see the other side of the rainbow. I can see the end of my life coming closer than when I was younger,” Mr. Alera said. “Through the stage design, this is my vision of what I want to do. I am ready to do this play.”

One of the unique touches — aside from trying to connect the play with Northboro and Southboro of yesteryear — is to perform the play in a theater-in-the-round setting that will allow the characters to walk among the audience members and not be confined to the stage. It’s the first attempt at such staging at the school.

Mr. Alera enlisted the help of colleague Michele Tontodonato and students in her marketing and research classes. The students fanned out across the two towns and worked with local historical societies and commissions to research the town’s histories. They also obtained first-hand accounts of what life was like in their towns 75 years ago from longtime residents Viola — known as “Auntie Vi” — Laptewicz, 91; Mrs. Cavanaugh, 92; Lena Carloni, 93; and Earl Watkins, 96.

Peg Leonard, program director at the Southboro Senior Center, helped arrange the interviews, and as she listened, she was struck by the connections being made and in the questions and responses about how Northboro and Southboro changed. One student who has lived through a few bad storms in the past few years asked what they did for food in the aftermath of the hurricane. Today, grocery store shelves are stripped bare in anticipation of bad weather.

“He just looked at her and said, `We grew our own. There were no supermarkets,” Ms. Leonard said. “It really brought you back in time listening to them. You could visualize it; it felt like we were living 75 years ago. It was a different lifestyle — they walked everywhere, and the towns looked different — it was farmland.”

The students made a video of their interviews that will be played outside the theater, surrounded by displays of newspapers and other documents from 1938.

“It gets down to the nuts and bolts about what life is about. It’s about the relationships you have with people,” said Katie Pyne, 18, a senior from Southboro who is the stage manager of the production. The lack of props is key to allow the audience to experience the story and the message of the play. “It doesn’t matter what century you are in. It’s the people you are with. Even though the actors are in costume, you can project your own self onto those people. It’s people that are crucial to life; material things just aren’t important ... `Our Town’ captures the beauty and simplicity of everyday life.”

Andrew Hamilton, 18, a senior from Northboro, plays the role of the Stage Manager in the play, with pages of dialogue in the play.

“There is just something that everyone can relate to about being human beings, about ordinary people living their lives,” Mr. Hamilton said.

Mike Ryan, 18, of Northboro, plays the lead character, George Gibbs.

“I like to think of him as a kid who wants to do the right thing and has issues balancing his life,” Mr. Ryan said. “The story is about his journey in realizing what is important in life. Everyone can relate to the relationships and themes in `Our Town’ in their own lives. Every time I see it, I cry — I see the growth between George and Emily and how it all ends and how it all comes together. It is very emotional — but I won’t cry on stage!”

“Our Town” opens Wednesday in Algonquin Regional High School’s Small Performance Theater and runs through Saturday. All performances are at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $7 for senior citizens, and can be reserved by contacting Arhstickets@gmail.com. Tickets may also be purchased at the door.

Contact Donna Boynton at dboynton@telegram.com or follow her on Twitter @DonnaBoyntonTG

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.